I use vertical arrows with Task, I find it soo much better than horizontal for Spencer. Just fire that thing up, zip/dash in, and even if he hits you on the way in, the arrows reset it or you get a free combo. They also help a lot against Sentinel and others who like to fly down on you.
For Deadpool, I use Quickwork as Spencer doesn’t really need a OTG assist. Quickwork allows for very hard to block setups, as it hits low. My favorite is after any combo that ends in a grapple in the corner. Instead of doing maneuver, jump up, at the peak of the jump, OTG grapple, call Deadpool, and j.M on the way down. Deadpool should hit only a few frames after Spencer, and from there it’s really easy to confirm. Even if he uses a reversal hyper on wakeup, like Bionic Arm, Hulk’s Meteor thingy, or even Task/Wesker counter hyper, this is a Safe Jump and if you did it right, you recover in less than the 5 frames or so they all take to start, for a free punish.
I main Spencer, Wesker, Hawkeye. I switch Spencer and Wesker as point characters depending on the match. This team is legit. Hawkeye is a great assist and anchor. Not a better anchor than Wesker of course, but people are snapping in anchor Weskers a lot now. I also think that level 2 x factor Wesker with an assist is very slept on.
I get 850k with Spencer using one meter anywhere on the screen. The dhc to Wesker usually makes it to about 950k which is not great as a dhc, but overall that is great damage. In the corner, the dhc doesn’t matter. Spencer gets almost 1.1 million by just comboing 2 supers on his own.
Wesker on point on this team is awesome as well. Hawkeye arrows are so fast. People must get use to the speed of the teleport mix ups quickly or they’ll pay for it dearly. Wesker gets MANY resets from the Spencer assist as well. Someone said that dhcing from Wesker to Spencer is hard in the corner? I couldn’t disagree more. The dhc is made much easier in the corner and Wesker can take this opponent to the corner off of a combo 100% of the time from anywhere on screen.
This team does take a bit of work, but it does work and there is solid synergy. I do realize though that this team works better with Doom if you can play him (i can not), but with work, it works well with Hawkeye as well.
I disagree about Doom being better for that team, hes a really bad anchor and his assist isn’t that much better than Hawkeyes for hit confirming, you just need to get used to it
I use the same team as well actually. Only problem with it honestly is that Hawkeye isn’t the greatest of anchors. His mixups and damage are paltry and so he really needs to hit gimlets/chip/get semi infinites due to the speed loops to pull anything off by himself. Spencer/Wesker with Hawkeye assist do more than enough damage to usually not force hawkeye to do all the heavy lifting though.
As for doom, I’d say there’s pros and cons. Doom can let spencer put out higher damage IF he can get UVGs off hidden missiles. if not he’s going to kill his scaling and he honestly doesn’t help wesker much. That said he can crank out the damage in X factor if needed.
Doom works better on that team for more reasons than his assist. Spencer’s command throw, raw tag to Doom equals death. Doom helps Spencer extend his combos better than arrows. Dhc from Spencer to Doom or Wesker to Doom does way more damage than anything to Gimlet. So far from what I can tell, Wesker has way more reset options with Doom’s beam than with Hawkeye arrows and you can also get more hits in your Wesker combo while still being able to combo into level 3 before deteration takes over. But Hawkeye is a better anchor and one on one, Hawkeye beats Doom pretty free if Hawkeye has meter.
i personally love missiles with spencer…call doom succesfully, then proceed to do watever the fck you want… missiles will cover you regardless. not to mention that if u get the mixup with the last few missiles after he’s gone, you can use him again at the end of the combo to extend it…by far one of the best assists in the game. if your job is done properly, doom will never have to see the field as a point character
That’s a hard call. I can see the merits of using plasma beam assist, but Spencer’s damage really goes through the roof with missiles.
Still, it can be a gamble to just call Doom missiles from the ground without proper coverage so you need to be careful. With the new extended range on zipline, I like to zip straight up into the air, call an assist, then zip around some more in the air. People are far less likely to notice you’ve called an assist if they can’t see it, and Doom is covering your approach anyway when you come down. This also works with beams and is great for not-so-obvious crossup assist shenanigans. As long as you can get to the other side of your opponent, your assist should be relatively safe because they can’t attack backwards.
Having said that, a beam assist can’t be disregarded either. I’ve been toying with Spencer/Iron Man/Doom and although I still think Iron Man is complete junk in Ultimate, there’s no denying how useful his assist is to get it. Even with the damage scaling, I’m still breaking 900k with 1 bar. And unibeam does disgusting damage at the very end of a combo and sets up really nice resets (not that they’re ever necessary) off of Death from above.
That’s the main reason I originally settled on Spencer/Taskmaster/Doom. As good as missiles were, I thought it was a liability just calling Doom willy nilly since Spencer can’t cover him all that well without using a super. Task gave me a better way to approach while being a great character on his own.
Now that Ultimate is here, I’m pretty bored of Task; he’s a little too one-dimensional. I had hoped to switch completely to Iron Man, but he’s far from a viable character. That said, with the change to zipline, maybe I don’t need a beam anymore.
Something like Spencer, Thor, Doom could be a lot of fun. Then again, Thor needs an in. Man team building is so hard, bleh.
That straight up zip is so good, I’m really surprised more people don’t use it (then again most spencers I see haven’t really put in the hours with him/aren’t playing him to his fullest online and in most tournaments). With roughly half to fullscreen spacing you can assist and either diagonal down or just zip across and usually hitconfirm if the assist hitstun decay is long enough. Opponent has enough time to get away while you’re getting started, but if they stay down it’s safe, free pressure.
It’s easy if you stick to good characters, hehe. If you’re looking for a Taskmaster-esque assist with a more interesting (and also viable) character, why not try Dante with Weasel Shot? The assist isn’t as good as Taskmaster arrows, but it’s still an assist that sees use in tournaments for a reason. PR Rog uses Spencer/Dante as well, I believe.
I’m running X23, Spencer, ???
Who should my anchor be?
My X23 has dirty mixups with the slant shot, I just need a zoning assist of some sort, someone who’s good on anchor and someone who can help out Spencers combos.
I’ve been running that same team as well, although lately I’ve been having more success with Nova in there instead of Hawkeye, even though I lose a lot of easy options when it comes to crossup teleports. The problem with that is my Spencer starts to suffer on point with Nova’s assist because I’ve been using the shield, and while it’s been really helpful for my Wesker (especially against Zeros!), it really hasn’t done anything for Spencer. Too bad you can’t switch your assists on the fly, would love to switch it to C. Rush whenever Spencer’s on point. When I play that team now I actually tend to bring Nova in first after Wesker even though I leave the order as Wesker, Spencer, Nova, since it seems to help the DHC synergy having Spencer’s hypers on deck all the time, and I’m more confident with Spencer as the last man standing than Nova at this point. I’ll leave Nova as the anchor if Wesker has done enough damage by the time I need to get him out of there though, but it means Spencer essentially playing as an anchor at that point anyway, since I haven’t thought of a way to use Nova’s shield to help Spencer get in.
I’d love to keep running Hawkeye on anchor for the easy in for my point characters and the bionic arrow closer, but I’ve had the same problems with him at anchor, especially since I’m just not good at or experienced with projectile zoning. So if he has to do anymore than come in and spam gimlets, I’m in trouble. Sadly all the characters that have an assist that would help both my Wesker and Spencer are either characters I hate, or characters I suck at. I think this is one thing that’s holding my Spencer back quite a bit.
If you’re in love with the arrows assist but less-than-enthused by Hawkeye’s abilities as an anchor, you could probably try swapping him out for Taskmaster. Almost the same assist, but it’s tied to a much more well-rounded character. Taskmaster’s projectile zoning certainly isn’t at Hawkeye’s level, but he complements it with high-priority sword normals and charging stars. And as a bonus, you also get one of the game’s more annoying voice-actors!
Yeah, sadly he fits into that category of characters I hate. Truth be told his assist would probably be better for me than Hawkeye’s, as his almost come out a little too fast for me. I was used to setting up crossups using Morrigan’s slow ass fireball in vanilla. I hurt myself in that there are very few characters in the game that I find cool enough to actually put on my team, and then between the characters I do kinda like, there are only a handful that I feel comfortable with their moveset and normals. I probably just need to suck it up and start playing Doom, but I have a feeling that I’ll never figure out how to move Doom around the screen very well. Combos look pretty easy, but it’s the movement I’m afraid of. Also I don’t really care for Doom’s character design in this game (nor did I in MVC2), so I’m not super enticed to play him anyway. I wish his alt DLC costume was more like this (with the hood down), then I’d probably play him. I need him to be a little more sleek.
Haha, I totally feel ya, I also only want to play characters that I like. You could also try using Trish as your anchor! Her horizontal space-control assist, Low Voltage H, goes at the proper speed to help characters get in (although it isn’t quite as good as the arrows because the hits aren’t staggered one after the other, but instead all hit at once due to the three projectiles being stacked on top of each other), and the balance/tier-talk thread seems to consider her to be one of the best anchors in the game (I’ve personally never played her, though, so I can’t back this up).
Oh, I actually like his character out-of-game. He just seems like such a dick in this game, and I know I’m a Wesker user but Taskmaster just seems too cheap even for me. Also fuck swords in this game. Also, this might sound gay but his look in general just seems to clash with the classy sort of laid back coolness of Wesker and Spencer (Nova and Hawkeye fit in pretty well). The Udon costume does seem better though, and I’ll probably get it since it comes with Hawkeye and Spencer’s I believe (but I probably won’t oftenuse redhead Spencer even though that was my first exposure to the character, dreads Spencer is too cool). Right now though the whole sword and shield and cape and skull mask is just too much.
Heh, it’s gonna sound like a broken record, but Trish is one of the characters that I find cool enough to use, but simply suck at, since I suck at playing a projectile zoning game. Yeah, I’m having trouble deciding on my third character. Wesker/Spencer for life, but I’m just not sure yet who’s going to complete the crowd. I was so sure Nova was going to have a beam assist goddammit. Would’ve solved all my problems.
If you really wanna use Nova, why not use him with Centurion Rush assist? I think it’s better than the shield assist at least…
I used to run Wesker/Spencer/Sentinel in Vanilla since Drones are incredible for rushdown. I never liked playing with Wesker or Sentinel but both of them grew on me, causing me to put a lot of effort in getting my Sentinel to be really good, I probably had the best Sentinel in my country. Unfortunately everybody here plays Wesker who bodies Sentinel for free
I started using that one, and it’s pretty nice, but I was getting blown up defensively, and getting caught in a lot of happy birthdays. Because of that it was really tough for me to use it confidently to get in, even though it made for some nice reset setups. Then I started using the shield as a response to getting blown up a couple times by Zero, and it just started working great for me. You can do some pretty neat reset setups with the shield as well (though that’s still a work in progress), and it drives people nuts when I combine it with midrange gun and teleport zoning from Wesker (note: not gun-teleporting, but rather gunshots and teleporting). It’s already saved my ass a bunch of times, as well as gotten me some very easy command throws after people have fallen on it a couple times and become a little wary of it. One big drawback is that if nova gets hit pretty hard you kind of have to stop using it. However, if he only gets nicked, I love using it for the giant shield.
Ah well, you can only do so much… You could try out using Trish as a rush-down character? I haven’t tried it myself, but the New Testament says that she’s pretty decent at rush-down, just that her low health is what encourages people to play a safer keep-away game. Have a dive-kick that’s cancellable sounds pretty godlike, and :h: and :s: normals have hitboxes the size of small countries. To keep recommending things, you could also try Felicia? I’m not sure how she fits on the “cool” scale, but not too many people use her, and her Rolling Buckler assist has been described as having lock-down potential as well as hitting low, and she’s got an OTG assist if you’d rather go all combo-video on your opponent. Top it off with Wesker-level abilities as an anchor (self OTGs, 1-frame command grab) topped off with a dive-kick that’s + frames on block (I hear that having one of those instantly makes you top-tier in this game). The balance/tier thread seems to consider her one of the bestest anchors as well, I’m just not sure how her Rolling Buckler actually behaves as an assist…
Ah. See, I had the opposite reaction. I’ve read every Deadpool comic since his inception, and I always thought that Taskmaster was pretty cool, if a little cheesy. Then I saw the Udon comic, though “whoah, what an awesome new character design!” and snatched it up. He spent most of the comic dressed up as Generic McNormalGuy, and I thought the whole things was pretty poorly written and generic. However I still can’t wait the use the costume
:eek: Okay, so felt the need to respond to this only because I went through the SAME process with the SAME characters on my journey that started back in vanilla.
First, Plasma Beam is great but converting off of it is oftentimes hardly worth the trouble (in my opinion) and has similar scaling compared to Unibeam with more deterioration.
The team I ran for a few months up until two weeks ago was Spencer/Iron Man/Doom. Unibeam and Missile assists. Especially in Ultimate, I’ve found Missiles to be too inconsistent and risky; I mean…they’re probably worth the risk just for the ridiculous damage, but the actual inconsistency of the assist is what has been turning me off as time has gone on. I’ve gotten used to Missiles “messing up the combo” when used to cover my approach and give me safe pokes, but I am personally willing to sacrifice the 160K for something that falls more inline with my playstyle.
Looking for a beam or high durability assist to cover your approach and save Doom for the damage is wise. Without a beam, you have to be prepared to tech at any time and rely on the parabolic swing much more to stop your motion midway if you have to. Beams and high durability projectiles just make moving forward not a chore; opening people up is hard enough–getting in shouldn’t -also- be a problem, you know? I think Iron Man is plenty viable, but that’s just me; I’ve found decent success with him and I’m not even terribly amazing with him; his hitconfirms are easily a million times easier and while his combos have gotten harder, his normals are better and his utility on point is pretty crazy. That’s a discussion for another day, though.
Worth noting, Spencer/Iron Man THC is retarded and always gets you a free UVG and follow up on that UVG. Spencer/Iron Man/Nemesis gets you two, but at that point you need it, LOL.
Two weeks ago, I was having the same conundrum as you and actually ran Spencer/Thor/Doom and was kinda impressing some people at the last local tournament with that Asgard technology. I came across Thor just because I was looking for a beam that didn’t knock down; I don’t really care how much the damage scaled because I just needed easy ways in. I also experimented with Chris’ Gun Fire and basically anything that didn’t knock down. While I think Thor actually is pretty good with Spencer and Doom, my issue is that his beam comes out too slowly, even though it does its job -very- well. I probably need to try more, but after a while, I found that I was treating Mighty Spark like Hidden Missiles in the sense that I had to protect it most times unless I used some very clever and very specific grappling patterns and at that point, people are trying to read my grapple patterns and punish the assist.
Thor with Missiles assist is SOOO GOOOD. Ugh. It’s a shame I can’t come up with more creative uses for grapple assist in Thor’s combos. D:
Right now I’m experimenting with Spencer/Chris/Felicia, which addresses some problems I’ve had aside from, but also including, getting in and staying in. This game…needs more non-knockdown beams. D:
